THE UNFINISHED CIVIL WAR

Director: Glenn Kirschbaum

Cast: John Krausse, Joe McGill

Country: U.S.
Year: 2001
Running Time: 94 min
Format: video

Barry Levinson once wrote of Baltimore that "It was bad enough that northerners thought we were from the south, and southerners thought of us as northerners. We are actually both...The Mason-Dixon line divided the city, or was somewhere nearby. To be honest, we never truly understood where the line was, but we were definitely divided!"

This lingering sense of division is the backbone of Glenn Kirschbaum's fascinating documentary--a project which began as a film about Civil War re-enactors, but which evolved into a chronicle of the raging debate in Columbia, South Carolina over whether the Confederate battle flag should continue to fly above the state Capitol.

At the film's core are two Civil War re-enactors who not only find themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield, but also on opposite sides of the debate over the "Southern Cross." Flag supporter, and Maryland native, John Krausse, who religiously dons the Confederate grey, believes the flag represents his Southern heritage, while South Carolina historian Joe McGill, who represents the Union with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry--the African American unit immortalized in the film Glory, believes the battle flag is a hurtful and exclusive symbol that ought not be given the dignity of flying above the Capitol dome of his home state.

By granting both sides of the debate a voice, The Unfinished Civil War manages to show how deeply emotional--and complex--this issue really is. And, in the film's most moving sequence, he also manages to show how we all might learn to resolve conflicts by searching for a piece of common ground.

--Gabriel Wardell

Presented By: Glenn Kirschbaum, John Krausse, Joe McGill

Glenn Kirschbaum began his film career in 1980 after moving to Los Angeles from his home in Boston. Over the next ten years, he produced and directed programming for ABC-TV, NBC-TV and Paramount Television. In 1988, Glenn was awarded a Local Emmy for the series, Secrets and Mysteries. The next year, Glenn's film, Adolf Hitler: The Man and the Myth, earned him two National Emmy Awards, one for writing and the other for producing. From 1990-97, Glenn wrote scripts for the NBC television series, Unsolved Mysteries. In 1998, he joined Greystone Communications as a Vice President in Charge of Television. The Unfinished Civil War is the result of two years of living, breathing, and traveling in the footsteps of the men and women who fought and are still "fighting" the American Civil War.